Technology enthusiasts from all over the world are descending on Las Vegas this week for the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which kicks off tomorrow. Most consumers will be on the hunt for advancements in products including smart cars, smartphones and high-definition televisions. But small-business owners can also find value at this massive electronics show.

For example, there will be advancements in work tools such as notebook PCs, improvements in consumer products with unexpected business applications including Internet-connected televisions. Also, expect plenty of upgrades to popular business software.

Here are the major business tech trends to watch for:

1. Smart TVs: The Next Small Business Display

What is it: It should come as no surprise that there will be a vast number of consumer-oriented TVs on display at CES. But with a slew of Internet-connected “Smart TVs” expected to be unveiled, next-generation TVs aren’t necessarily a passive device anymore. They might actually have a place inside your business as high-tech signage, a waiting room addition or a conference room display.

Who’s doing it: Google TV has been leading the smart TV charge, but it is expected that mainstream makers such as South Korea-based Samsung and Irvine, Calif.-based Broadcom will show updated Android-powered sets. On top of that, Apple Inc. is expected to announce its own advanced interactive television solution later in 2012.

How to make it work for you: These smart displays should function like a giant smartphone or tablet, able to display weather, news, sports and other content side by side with company marketing material on-demand. A retail store or bakery might use it as part of its point-of-sale marketing, displaying menus with client-created pictures or other content. Or a smart TV can be deployed as a Web-enabled employee kiosk on the sales floor or in the break room.

2. Microsoft Making the Call on Windows 8

What is it: Tech giant Microsoft is expected to focus this year on its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Windows 8 will likely become available for public beta testing sometime early in 2012, raising the question: What’s in it for small companies?

What will work: In early demos, Windows’ new user interface works similar to the Windows Phone mobile environment, with a start screen that features a well-laid-out grid of apps that let users quickly dive into programs. Windows 8 also manages multiple monitors, has full integration for Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 and the Windows Phone tools, and security has been improved.

What won’t: Even though Windows 8 boasts what might be Microsoft’s best user interface ever, it might be a difficult sell for small businesses. A number of companies still have not upgraded to Windows 7. Many still use Windows XP. So, Windows 8 might be a couple steps ahead what many firms are currently used to. Plus, some businesses might not be able to justify the expense and hassle of migrating to a new OS when so many of the changes are merely cosmetic.

3. The Business Case for Ultrabooks

What is it: Ultrabooks are a new family of super-thin, ultra-light notebook computers. Upwards of 50 new models are expected to be demoed at CES this year from the major laptop makers. Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo and Acer have either announced, or already have their own Ultrabooks in circulation.

The term Ultrabooks is actually copyrighted by Intel, which is pushing for this new breed of notebook as it struggles to keep the PC relevant in the age of mobile devices. Ultrabooks usually don’t weigh more than about three pounds, are less than an inch thick and offer rapid start-up times.

Who can use it: Ultrabooks can potentially be a useful tool for just about any business. They are similar to tablets in terms of portability, convenience, weight and bulk. But they also have built-in keyboards and powerful processing speeds compared to tablets. They are comparatively priced at about $1,000.

If you get in on these three trends, these latest tools can offer your business a serious technology boost.

This article was first seen in Entrepreneur on January 9, 2012 and written by Jonathan Blum.  (Jonathan Blum is a freelance writer and the principal of Blumsday LLC, a Web-based content company specializing in technology news.)

Entrepreneurs have to wear many hats when a business is just starting. Many things need to be delegated to others in order for the business to run smoothly and there are a few things that you must do yourself. If you can create a habit of performing these 5 things every day, some for just a few minutes, then you will see your business grow right alongside your dreams:

1. Plan for the future a few minutes each day. Assume that your product has stopped selling all of a sudden. What direction will you take your company next? What new income stream can you add? This is a time for day dreaming and recording notes in preparation for the future. You don’t necessarily have to take action on these items, but you need to think about them daily in order to bring out the golden ideas.

2.  Develop or strengthen your business network. You need to join or create a business network where you can help others and they can help you back. This is a great place to get free customers through referrals and an excellent mentoring opportunity using the mastermind principle.

3. Work on closing a sale every single day. Whether you are doing this on-line, on the phone, through the mail, or face-to-face you need to be selling every day. Without the close of a sale there is no business. This is not something that you can delegate all the way. Even if you have a sales force you need to be out there looking for deals.

4. Work on your marketing in some aspect every day to get new customers. If your prospective customers don’t know about you they won’t buy from you. Work on getting your message out every day even if it is just for a few minutes.

5. Contact your current customers. Don’t ever forget about the people that have already purchased from you. These are your best customers. They already like what you have to sell and they don’t cost anything to acquire. Contact your current customers frequently, even if you are just saying hello. They need to know what you have to offer and they need to know you are still breathing. They won’t seek you out. You must go to them.

We had an opportunity to talk with Mike Stelzner – founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com — about how he created the most popular social media news site in less than a year.

This interview is important for any small business owner who wants to learn how to leverage social media to build a brand presence, increase traffic, links, and ultimately drive more business.

In this interview, you’ll learn:

• A dynamic strategy for producing content your audience wants
• The importance of producing “nuclear content” to drive more traffic, subscribers, and links
• Keys to creating a great business page in Facebook
• Common mistakes made by small business owners in Facebook

Check out the full interview with Mike  . . .

It’s amazing to see how quickly SocialMediaExaminer.com took off.

Mike: Yeah, it really has. I mean, it’s been amazing. It’s been a great ride. We’re really only 22 months old, and it’s been a rocket ship ride into outer space. It’s been faster than I could have ever imagined for sure.

So what are some factors that contributed to your success?

Mike: I think that there’s a craving out there from business owners and marketers wanting to understand how to use these new media tools and how to connect with customers while bypassing the typical middleman. If you think about traditional marketing, it typically involved paying money to somebody else who owned an audience, like a magazine, a newspaper or a radio station.

But now, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ allow businesses to connect with consumers directly. And that’s just been a paradigm shift, really. We got started in October 2009, and it was all about delivering high-value, how-to content, which most people weren’t getting. Most people were just commenting on their opinion about what’s going on, but there were very few blogs or online magazines that were just getting deep into how to do this kind of stuff. I think that’s part of the reason why we exploded as quickly as we have, and I think you’re going to see it continue. Businesses of all sizes everywhere in the world are still grappling with social media, and it’s changing every day. So there’s always going to be a need for a site like ours.

If you were to go back two years ago and start SocialMediaExaminer.com over again, would you do anything different?

Honestly, I don’t think I’d do anything different. In the beginning, we identified experts in the industry of social media who had a lot of knowledge. We took a camera crew with us to Blog World Expo in Las Vegas two days after we launched, and we interviewed all the high-profile individuals at the time, which included Chris Brogan, Richard Jalichandra, Steve Rubel, and all these other folks. I really just asked them the kinds of questions that we would have wanted to ask ourselves if we were a small business or a business of any size. And then we showcased those videos on SocialMediaExaminer.com. We got on the phone and interviewed a lot of marketers, like Seth Godin, who is very well-known in the world of marketing. And we started reviewing some of the new books that were out there because, obviously, people were so hungry to learn more about social media.

It was about creating a movement. It was about embracing others. It was not about us. We didn’t sell anything in the beginning. As a matter of fact, we didn’t sell anything for the first four months of the site. And then we recruited high-profile individuals to pen articles for SocialMediaExaminer.com — people like Mari Smith, who later went on to write “Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day,” which is one of the most popular Facebook marketing books out there.

And through that process of getting all these experts contributing content – all of a sudden everybody else wanted to be a part of it. And before you knew it, we had this massive movement, and it exploded.

I ultimately ended up writing a book called Launch, and the book actually lays out precisely how we did it and how it could work for any business. It wasn’t the first time that I had done something like this, but it was the best launch, you could say, that I’ve ever done.

Some small-business owners and bloggers might look at your success story and think, “Well, I don’t know anybody in the industry. Your strategy won’t work for me.”

Mike: I didn’t know anybody either. So here is what we did in the beginning, and here is what any small business can do.

Step number one: tap your personal network. I looked up my friends who I knew from my prior relationships, and I said, “Who seems to get this space that I’m in?” And I reached out to them, and they were first. I then asked them, “Who do you know that I should interview?” And it was that simple. It was just about leveraging the network. Everyone has a network. Everyone has friends on LinkedIn or a personal or professional network that they could tap. It was about working the network.

Then we started to seek people out on our own, and one of the things that we learned was that when authors have new books out, they’re the most open to being accessible to journalists or bloggers or anybody for that matter. So we began targeting new books, and we discovered the new books by going to Amazon.com and looking at new marketing books. And that’s like the perfect list for us to work from. And we were able to reach out to those new book authors, get interviews with them, and develop relationships with the up-and-comers.

We also went to trade shows. We knew that the people who were at the bigger trade shows had been vetted by the trade show staff. They must have had something good to say. And we also knew that if someone was at a trade show,  they’ve already agreed to speak publicly about whatever it is that they have to share. So how hard would it be for us to get an interview with them? Not very hard at all. As a matter of fact, many of them are there for that purpose – to get exposure. So we just leveraged these little undertapped mechanisms to build those relationships with people. If it’s really all about you sharing your platform with others as a small business owner, and it’s not about you trying to sell them on something.  

Success happened very fast. Was there a tipping point for you?

Mike: Yeah, it was pretty much our goal to reach 40,000 email subscribers double opted in by the end of our first year, meaning these are people who wanted to receive our emails and confirmed that they wanted to receive them, which is the best kind of email opt-in you can get. We hit that on our one-year anniversary.

But the tipping point was when we went back to Blog World for the second year. Things were completely different. People came up to us out of the blue, and they started telling us how much they loved what we were doing. And it wasn’t just our readers. It was also the very people we had interviewed a year earlier who were patting me on the back and whispering in my ear, “You’re killing it.” That kind of endorsement for me was the tipping point. At that point, I realized we had gone big. And that was about 10 months ago from today. We had 40,000 email subscribers then. We have 105,000 today. So after that one-year anniversary, we had realized that we were on a massive trajectory, and we were pretty much unstoppable as long as we didn’t deviate too far to the left and too far to the right and stayed focused. I never would have thought that we would have grown this fast if you asked me when I started SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Let’s talk about your content production. Do you look at your Web analytics to decide on what type of content your audience likes the most?

Mike: We do look at our Web analytics, but we don’t let that drive our content production. Instead, we have a survey that we do at the beginning of each year called the Social Media Marketing Industry Survey. We typically run it in January, and we ask a lot of questions of our readers and our followers on Facebook, Twitter, etc. We ask them things like, “What’s the biggest question you want answered about social media?”

And we also ask them what tools they use and how they are going to change their use of tools in the next year. We also ask how much time they are committing, etc. And from that data, we produce a free report called the Social Media Marketing Industry Report. We give it away. It’s a huge marketing thing that we do. We usually get about 40,000 people reading that report in the first couple weeks.

But we also use the data from that report to actually plan our editorial calendar, so it’s a double win for us. You know, we’ve got this great thing that we give away for free that we don’t require any registration for, and everybody loves it, and we’ve been written up in The Wall Street Journal and all over the place about the findings of these reports that we put out every year. But more importantly, we know what our readers are actually interested in, and that drives our editorial decisions.

In Launch, you talk about primary fuel content and nuclear fuel. Can you talk a little bit about the differences?

Mike: Right. There are two kinds of content that can bring people to your business. Primary fuel is the content you produce regularly (e.g., your average blog posts). Nuclear fuel is the kind of stuff that’s really complicated but is stuff that people go crazy over (e.g., reports that they normally would have to pay for but are free).

And the upside to nuclear fuel is mass exposure. You’ve given a gift to people. You know what I mean? And it empowers them to make decisions about what they’re going to be doing in the future. And that builds stronger relationships between your readers and your brand. But it’s also something that demonstrates the value of your wbsite.

You could argue that it’s a form of marketing. Yes, it costs a lot of money actually — a lot of time to analyze and produce a survey, hire a graphics designer to create a nice cover, etc. But at the end of the day, I would probably have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the equivalent number of press mentions about the report. You know what I mean? Just think about all the advertising I would have to buy and all these different mediums just to get the word out about that report. It’s free because now I’ve got thousands and thousands of people who are sharing this thing everywhere.

A lot of seo consultants talk about the importance of keyword research to optimize content and bring in more traffic. Do you conduct keyword research to come up with topics to write about?

Mike: I think there’s something to be said about keyword research, but in our case, we’ve never really focused on that in a hardcore way.

As a matter of fact, last month, we had 935,000 page views on SocialMediaExaminer.com, and less than 25 percent of our traffic is coming from search engines. Nearly all of our traffic is coming from social. So what does that mean? That means that people are sharing it on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus or sources that we can’t even track. For us, it’s really incredible that we can get that kind of traffic and still not be super-reliant on the search engines.

The bad news about search engines is these keyword phrases are highly competitive, and you are competing with tens of thousands of other companies that are trying to also optimize those very same phrases.

And you would imagine in the world of social media that I’m in, I’m competing against some pretty big players — every conceivable publication in the world writes about social media, and there’s no shortage of them. I mean, there’s no physical magazine and no online source that isn’t probably talking about social media in some capacity. We focus on the human element. What do our readers want? What’s going to resonate with them?

And we know that for every article that we write, thousands of new people come every day because people are sharing our content in their communities. So for us, that’s more valuable than keyword research because in our industry, things change rapidly. An article today might be outdated two months from now. And what that does, ultimately, it drives more people to SocialMediaExaminer.com, increases our subscriber rates and ultimately grows the whole company. So that’s why we do it.

Well, I think this is a great segue into talking about social networks and how they are a central driving force for bringing in visitors. What has been your strategy to keep your Facebook fans engaged?

Mike: We actually have three people (myself included) monitoring our Social Media Examiner Facebook page 24-hours a day. Our strategy is to answer every single question that people post on our page. People have come to realize that if they have a question about something, they can just come to our fan page and get it answered. That has been really, really valuable for a lot of people.

We also ask questions every couple of days. Sometimes it’s got nothing to do with social media. Like if it’s Labor Day weekend, we’ll ask, “What are your plans for Labor Day?”, or if it’s Valentine’s Day, “What are you going to get for your valentine?” I mean, things that absolutely seem to have no relationship with social media, but a lot of people can connect  with us on a human level. And these kind of things get people engaged in the news feed.

Some businesses are fearful about getting into Facebook because they fear negative comments. What is your advice for them?

There are always going to be negative comments, and a big majority of those tend to be frustrated customers who tried to get an answer and couldn’t go anywhere else and resorted to Facebook. The first thing you’ve got to do is immediately acknowledge the comment and just say, “Hey, I’m sorry to hear about that.” The second thing is to try to determine whether or not this person is out to get you or whether they just truly want to get their problem resolved. There are people in this world who are sometimes called trolls, and their whole purpose in life is to basically create a ruckus when there doesn’t need to be one. And sometimes, those kind of people just need to be banned from your Facebook page. But the vast majority of people are not like that.

Most people truly have real issues that they need to get resolved as fast as possible, and sometimes it’s just a matter of acknowledgment. Think about if you’ve ever been into a department store and you’ve gotten poor service and you ask to talk to the manager. If you had to wait around for a half an hour for the manager to show up, you’d probably get really frustrated. But if the manager showed up five minutes later and was really appreciative and listening to what you were saying, even if they can’t do anything for you, you’re going to feel a lot better about that relationship, and that’s the key to Facebook. It’s just like face-to-face, and peoples’ issues need to be resolved.

The downside to not using social media because you’re concerned people are going to say poor things about you is that people are going to say things about you with social media regardless. All you have to do is go to http://search.Twitter.com and type in the word sucks on any brand. You will see bazillions of people complaining, especially if you’re a big brand.

If you’re a small business, it’s less of an issue. As a matter of fact, I would encourage any small business to get on Facebook because chances are pretty good most people aren’t griping about you. It’s the bigger businesses that have bigger issues with that — you know, the enterprise organizations.

So I would encourage any business that’s decided, “Eh, we don’t want to go on Facebook because we’re concerned about negative comments.” I’d say, “What have you got to lose? Try it out. You can always back out of it if it doesn’t work out, but I would say try it out.”

If you were talking to a small business owner who is just getting on Facebook, what are a few practical tips you’d give them?

Mike: Well, we have a cool getting started guide on SocialMediaExaminer.com. If you go to the Getting Started section, you can see all sorts of interesting articles that will go way beyond this interview. But one of the first things that you want to do is develop an avatar that’s nice and conveys your brand. The second thing you want to do is develop some sort of a welcome page — and there are bazillions of apps out there that make it so that if you don’t know anything about programming. The cool thing about these welcome pages is you can create little videos that say, “Hey, thanks so much for visiting our page. Click that welcome tab up there to begin engaging with our site.” You can even set up special offers for people that become fans, maybe they get discounts or something. Those are the very basic things.

Any things small businesses should avoid doing in Facebook?

Yeah, don’t just set it up and forget it. The “set and forget it” model is a serious mistake. It’s not an “If you build it, they will come” mentality and will just automate and take care of itself. You need to actually have a plan in place on what you’re going to do with a Facebook page. The other thing is don’t schedule posts using scheduling software like HootSuite to show up on your wall because Facebook penalizes you for that. If you manually post stuff on your wall, Facebook actually will increase the chances that it will show up in peoples’ news feeds, which, at the end of the day, is how people will interact with your brand. They don’t usually ever come back to your Facebook page. Instead, they just wait to see your updates in their feeds.

You’re a big advocate of just giving away great content as a means of gaining fans. And obviously, the strategy has worked extremely well for you. In your book Launch, you talk about your elevation principle formula:

Great Content + Other People – Marketing Message = Growth

Can you talk about this?

Mike: Yeah. So the idea is that most people are repelled by marketing messages. They don’t like to be marketed to, and I think anybody who is listening or reading what I’m saying right now can understand that we are attacked by marketing messages in our car, airports, bathroom stalls — and literally everywhere. The problem is that people tune out and they don’t pay attention to those ads. So that creates a real quandary for us who are business owners and marketers. How can we get in front of people when they’re not paying attention?

People don’t trust us anymore. Edelman did a study that showed that only one in three people trust businesses. Those are two serious quandaries. So what do you do? Well, we should focus on the needs of people, and if you can figure out how to provide what people want for free and can figure out how to scale that by  hundreds or thousands or millions of people, then you can rapidly grow a following upon which you can grow a business, and you do that with content.

Content provides the ultimate scalability because a single article can work for you in a way that a human being on the phone never could. And it’s something that if done right, people will end up sharing the content with their peers, which will drive more traffic back to it, and it creates this awesome feeder mechanism. So that’s the great content you need. You also have to bring in people outside of your organization if you want to grow — these experts that we refer to earlier. And the last thing is put away the marketing messages.

When you do all three of those, you end up creating content that is highly valuable and not perceived as bait designed to convert. And when I receive a gift that I know has no strings attached, I’m going to love you as a result of it. I’m going to want to keep reading your stuff and tell my friends about it. And what that does is create a big, big following upon which you can ultimately begin the process of selling, and that’s the elevation principal. You first need to own the audience so that you’re not reliant on middlemen anymore who cost you a ton of money.

Google is a middleman. Magazines are middlemen. Wouldn’t it be great if you just were the publisher and you owned the audience and wouldn’t have to rely on anyone? That’s exactly what the book talks about.

Check out SocialMediaExaminer.com to learn more about utilizing social media for your business – and also read Launch to learn about Michael Stelzner’s strategy for creating one of the world’s most popular social media news sites.  Follow Mike Stelzner on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you want to make money through selling, you don’t have to be a great sales person, you just need to avoid these common mistakes:

Don’t forget to qualify

Before you can sell, you have to find someone to sell to, right? Whether it’s someone coming to you or whether you are finding someone to sell to, the first thing you have to do is qualify your potential customer.  If you forget to do the qualifying step a large percentage of your time will be wasted on potential customers who don’t really need your offering, or can’t afford it.

Every opportunity isn’t equal. Through qualifying you’ll get a better understanding of what each customer wants, when they want it by, their budget, and most importantly you’ll be able to figure out if you are talking to the person who can actually make the decision.

If you aren’t sure how to qualify people, all you have to do is ask them simple questions such as:

• What are you looking for specifically?
• What’s your budget?
• When are you looking to start?

Don’t be a “yes” man

Do you know what the biggest sales mistake you can make? It’s not forgetting to qualify. It’s saying “yes”.

When a potential customer makes a request, you’re naturally going to want to say “yes”. And once you say yes a few times, you’ll realize that you’re walking on a slippery slope because the customer will keep on making requests and each one will not only cost you money, but it will let the customer know that they can be demanding and walk all over you.

If you can do what a customer wants and it is profitable for you, say yes. If the request is unreasonable, say no. By setting this precedent early on, you’ll have more happy customers.

Don’t offer too much information

The more information you offer to people, the more likely they’ll be confused. And when people are confused, they won’t become a customer.  Learn to get your message out in a quick and short way as it will be easier to understand. Trying to look smart by using sophisticated language or talking in technical jargon is just overkill. When pitching customers, make sure you only tell them what they need and want to know. People have short attention spans, so be careful about dragging things on.

Don’t over sell

Similar to offering potential customers too much information, you can’t over sell. If you’re too pushy it’s a big turn off.  You have to think of sales like dating. If you reek of desperation, no one will be attracted to you. You have to be casual with your sales techniques and really act like you don’t care to make the sale. Because at the end of the day, if your product or service is that good, the person you are selling to should be privileged to use it.

If you are one of those people who want to be a bit pushy instead of just waiting things out, you can always create a sense of urgency to close the deal… plus it won’t seem like you are overselling.

Don’t lose sight of the goal

You’re in sales meetings to make sales, right? Well of course you are, so why would you waste your time chit chatting about random topics with a potential customer?

You don’t have people’s undivided attention forever, so make sure you are keeping track of time and you get your message across as quick as possible. If you have spare time after that you can start chit chatting about common interests as that will help build a stronger connection, but you shouldn’t do that until you get all of your major points across and have the person on the hook.

Don’t delay your sales

If your product or service isn’t ready, you’ll have a tendency to not sell until it’s ready. The big problem with this is that you can’t predict when things are going to be ready. Yes your engineers can give you a completion date, but the chances are there will be delays.

So why not just start selling now? You don’t have to give your customers your product or service right now, you can give them access to it in the future. And by having them sign up right now, you can always give them a discount to entice them.

Don’t talk past the sell

After you close a deal, you need to learn to stop talking. Learn to keep your mouth shut after someone tells you they want to be a customer. If you can’t, this is the best time to chitchat about random subjects (that aren’t related to politics or religion.)

Conclusion

You don’t have to be a good sales person to close a deal; you just have to avoid the above mistakes. If you can do that, you’ll start to close more deals and make more money. You don’t have to focus your time on trying to become an exceptionally great sales person, rather you just need to focus on avoiding the common pitfalls outline here.

Build a Small Business Saturday campaign.

Make the most of Small Business Saturday by creating a multichannel marketing campaign plan now. Here are some things to consider as you build out your own Small Business Saturday campaign:

Create a complete campaign that leverages different ways to communicate with your customers and extend your reach to new prospects. Sequencing your outreach is critical. You want to be relevant, not annoying. Calendar out all the activities so you can see how many contacts you will be making with your customers.

• Create a unique message for your business that ties into the Small Business Saturday theme but highlights the value you deliver to your customers.
• Don’t miss out on the future relationship-building opportunity this campaign creates. Capture contact information from your customers and prospects so you can continue to communicate with them.

 Here are some tactical things to consider within your marketing campaign:

 Website customization

-          Add a banner to your Website in support of Small Business Saturday.

-          Add a landing page to your Website where you can feature your special campaign offer. Using coupons is a great way to give value to your Website visitors. Twenty-two percent of U.S. adults say their household uses digital coupons from email or the Internet. Allow your customers to redeem the coupon either in-store or online on Small Business Saturday.

• Direct-marketing campaigns

-          Create a series of emails to your current customers that tie into Small Business Saturday with special offers and coupons. Send two to three emails regarding the promotion, and if you have a retail location and are looking to generate in-store sales, make sure the last email is sent the day before your event as a reminder.

-          Always include links to your social sites as well as refer-a-friend options in your customer emails.

Use direct mail to target prospects and attract new customers to your business. Direct mail recipients buy 25 percent more items and spend more than non-direct-mail recipients, according to recent data published in a study by the U.S. Postal and Deliver Magazine, “How Direct Mail Strengthens Online Sales.” Direct mail is a great way to reach out to prospects and encourage them to begin a dialog with you via future email campaigns. Ensure that you are targeting the right customers with your direct-mail offers. Services like Experian’s Clone My Customer can help with refining your target audience for your direct-mail campaign.

-          Create a personalized URL (pURL), or landing page, for your direct-mail campaign where you can capture email addresses of new prospects. Use a special offer on the landing page to encourage consumers to give you their email addresses.

 Social marketing

-          Add new content to your blog that features the value of shopping local. Tie into the Small Business Saturday national advertising theme to make the most of blog postings.

-          Use Twitter and Facebook to promote your Small Business Saturday event. Link your tweets back to your landing page and your special offer. Facebook is a great way to not only get your message out and dialog with your customers, but also give special offers to your fans.

 Event marketing

-          Don’t forget to plan out the day of the event. Include messaging on your Website or in your business location that promotes your support of Small Business Saturday.

Capture email addresses from your customers. The best way to capture email is to offer a value, such as a free gift, a special discount or a newsletter subscription. These are all ways to encourage your new customers to give you their contact information.

Click here to download our entire ebooklet of tips to get your business prepared and ready for Saturday, November 26th.

Engage Your Existing Customers With The Ease Of Email

Differentiate your marketing for Small Business Saturday and the upcoming holiday season. Understand that as the holiday shopping season goes full throttle, so do the marketing messages that prospects receive. Make your message clear and concise. That means shorter emails, fewer emails and emails that are more effective.

As with direct-mail coupons, you can use email coupons to drive traffic in on Small Business Saturday. Consider sending a series of emails with your coupon offer to create urgency. For example, try designing a promotional email offering a “Five-Day Sale” that expires on Small Business Saturday. Follow up on Wednesday with a “Three Days Left” email message and then a “Don’t Miss Out! Final Sale Day!” email on Saturday. Announce the remaining number of days for the sale in your subject line, and include calls to action throughout your email.

You also can send your existing customers a special “customer appreciation” email in advance of Small Business Saturday letting them in on even more exclusive deals that the general public wouldn’t be privy to. This strategy will help to build on your customer loyalty now and during the rest of the year.

Remember, email marketing is often a catalyst for Web users to purchase offline. More than half of users in one survey had made a purchase offline after receiving an email promotion. Make it easy for customers to find your business by including your address, phone and hours of business in every email you send during this holiday season.

Try our email campaign builder for a FREE 60-day trial, and start sending your emails today.  And don’t forget to download our ebooklet of tips to help you drive in traffic during Small Business Saturday and the rest of this holiday season.

Create buzz with direct mail.

Make sure you generate buzz for your business on Small Business Saturday! For some customers, your holiday ads and direct mail will be their first introduction to your business, so you want to make a good impression and inspire them to buy.

The most effective forms of direct mail include some type of offer. To determine the most effective offer, ask yourself, “What do I want to accomplish on Small Business Saturday?” More customers and increased sales are probably the overall objective.

Your offer must be strong enough to make your audience respond, so be sure your direct mail includes:

·         A unique selling proposition that sets you apart from your competition.

·         Quality design that gives you a professional image.

·         A clear description of your offer and a call to action that encourages the reader to buy, such as “Shop now! Offer expires November 26.”

·         A coupon or a discount that encourages new and repeat business as well customer loyalty.

·         A free gift for signing up for your email list or stopping by your store location.

Another increasingly popular marketing tool to include on your direct mailer is a personalized landing page, known as a pURL. pURLs are unique Web addresses that direct your targeted recipients to a Web page designed specifically for them. By including a pURL on your mailer, you can capture responses that offer valuable information about your customers — all while promoting your company’s products and services.

During this busy time of year, our Personal Marketing Consultant can help you create your Small Business Saturday marketing campaign from start to finish — quickly and affordably. Get your FREE consultation today.  And remember, make sure you register to receive our entire book of tips that can help you prepare for Small Business Saturday.

Last year, more than 1.2 million consumers participated in Small Business Saturday. It is expected that the event will grow significantly again this year. Now is the time to start building your own momentum.  And, good place to start is with your own customer and prospect list. Use the time leading up to Small Business Saturday to collect customer information through your Website, such as email addresses, product preferences and so on. Here’s how to get customers to join in.

Let customers know now that you are participating in Small Business Saturday. Ask them to join your mailing list so you can keep them informed of the special offers that you will be promoting that day and in the future. Develop a refer-a-friend program that will enable your best customers to help you through word-of-mouth marketing. Make sure you offer an incentive to encourage their participation.

 Also, the more information you can gather on your customers, the better you’ll be able to meet their future needs. Consider developing a quick survey to find out why they buy your products or services and how you can better meet their needs. Customers, especially at this time of year, are looking for great deals. It’s an ideal opportunity to gather names and build your customer file. Once your customers opt in to your mailing list or email list, make sure to continually deliver value. Nurture the relationship and provide exceptional service, and they will stay.

For more easy ways to build your customer list, check back at some of our older postings.  Don’t forget to get  your copy of our Small Business Saturday tips.

This is Part III in our series of posts about how you can better prepare your business for Small Business Saturday – November 26.

Take advantage of Small Business Saturday resources

Do you need some help making the most of this day? Check out the Small Business Saturday Facebook page  as well as the FAQ page for some useful resources and information.

Contact businesses in your area as they may be interested in promoting Small Business Saturday. Check with your chamber of commerce to see how they plan on participating. Band together with other local small businesses and develop joint campaigns that will attract more new customers to your area.  A bike shop could team up with a sports apparel store to offer complementary discounts, for example, or a bakery with an ice cream shop.  Small Business Saturday lets you take advantage of the entire business community in helping to make this a successful event.

For even more information, be sure to check out our Small Business Saturday e-booklet.  It’s full of valuable information to get your business ready for this busy and lucrative time of year.

Welcome back to our series on getting your business ready for November 26th – Small Business Saturday.  Part II focuses on how you can find new, ideal prospects and create a local following.

No matter what kind of business you run, Small Business Saturday and the holiday season offer numerous opportunities to boost your visibility among new customers. So while you may be putting a lot of effort into your newsletter or customer email campaigns, don’t forget also to look outside of your current customers to attract new prospects. Small businesses of all kinds can get creative with targeted marketing offers that encourage new and repeat business among niche audiences.

To increase your sales during this important time, focus on improving your marketing campaigns with the best possible list of prospects who look like your best customers. With Experian’s customer cloning technology, you can drive in more business on Small Business Saturday by concentrating your efforts on finding and targeting more of the right kind of customers for your business.

With that kind of exposure, you’ll have more eyes on your Website, more foot traffic through your front door and more money in your registers during this crucial time of year. Who wouldn’t want that?  Start cloning today.

For our complete booklet of tips, be sure to visit us here.